Television footage showed that several cars and tractor-trailers smashed into each other near Picacho Peak in south-central Arizona, with at least one passenger car pinned between two 18-wheelers and others wedged under big rigs.

Henry Wallace told KPHO-TV ( http://bit.ly/HtzaLe) that he got out of his car just in time before the crashes began.

"One truck hit another truck. Cars start piling into each other, and they pushed that one truck right into me and off to the side of the road," Wallace said. "I couldn’t see anything because the (dust) was so thick, but I could just hear it, `Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.’ "

Medical helicopters airlifted several of the injured to hospitals in Tucson and Phoenix, and DPS officials said at least one person was in critical condition.

The names and hometowns of the other two killed weren’t immediately available, authorities said.

The Picacho Peak area is prone to dust storms that develop suddenly and can quickly reduce visibility to zero for drivers.

The National Weather Service had issued a blowing dust advisory shortly before the crashes, with wind gusts of up to 30 mph reported in the area.

"A steady southwest wind created channels of dense, blowing dust," meteorologist Chris Dunn of the National Weather Service’s Phoenix office told the television station. "Unfortunately, one of those localized channels of dust ended up over a busy Arizona interstate."

DPS spokesman Bart Graves said Tuesday’s crash was one of the worst chain-reaction accidents in that area in the past seven years.

Parts of the westbound lanes of I-10 at the crash scene were closed for more than five hours.